"Hang on, I've gotta pull the bulldozer over. I won't be a sec."

Meet Ross Knight, punk rock's most unlikely star.

He is the bulldozer-driving, beer-guzzling frontman of Australian punk rock band Cosmic Psychos - a band which had the likes of Seattle grunge legends Pearl Jam, Mudhoney and The Melvins all singing their praises in the 2013 documentary about the band, Blokes You Can Trust.

He lives in remote Victoria at MiaMia, a two-hour drive from Melbourne, where he spends his days working on his farm.

Switching between life on the farm and life on the road has become the norm for Knight, who formed the band in 1982.

"I've been doing it for 30-something years now and I know it sounds a bit odd but I'm so used to it," the 53-year-old says.

"I live in a little hamlet called MiaMia and used to spend a lot of time in New York, so I used to call it from Manhattan to Mia Mia.

"I guess it is unusual when you think about it but, as I said, I don't know any different.

"I'd go nuts if I just drove bulldozers and farmed but I'd go absolutely berserk if all I did was play shitty rock'n'roll, so I'm right in the middle and quite happy about that."

After playing the final Big Day Out in 2014 at the request of Pearl Jam frontman Eddie Vedder (Cosmic Psychos also played at the first Big Day Out in 1992 alongside Nirvana), Knight and bandmates Dean Muller (drums) and John McKeering (guitar) are hitting the road again for a national tour to support their first new album in six years, Cum The Raw Prawn.

For a band that has built a career out of singing about beer, partying and bulldozers — well, not a lot has changed. There's "a bit of foul language" on the record, Knight says with his tongue firmly in cheek, but the songs are meant to "be a laugh".

"Music seems to take itself all a little bit too serious.

"The whole business takes itself too seriously. And that's not being disrespectful because I'm part of it, but geez, the attitude ... every 10 years or so it just goes to shite.

"A lot of a musicians are very serious artists and you know what? One in a thousand is, and one in a thousand will still be doing it in 50 years time because they're really good at it. The rest of us are just tripe."

Knight fell in love with the simplicity of punk rock music in the late '70s. As a teen in a rural town, he decided to give it a go, figuring he "didn't have to be too talented" to play three-chord riffs.

"I started a band in high school but then I heard that not only did you get to play but you also got free beer which is, like, shit ... well, I'll be part of that!

The Psychos became underground legends and influenced a generation of bands with their yobbo rock, in Australia and overseas, particularly in Seattle.

In Blokes You Can Trust, Buzz Osborne of Melvins describes the band's sound as "like late-'70s punk rock, played through a stereo inside of a muffler of a car dragging down the freeway".

Osborne is among many who rate the band as a huge influence, alongside Butch Vig (who produced Nirvana's Nevermind album), Mudhoney and Vedder.